Mite Busters!

On June 5th, Cindy heard what she thought was a "nesting song" sung by the House Finches.  The next day, twigs started appearing on the beam over our front porch--the porch we had only reclaimed three weeks before from the previous nesting experience.  On June 7th, she saw two female finches apparently fighting over the nesting material on the beam.  Or maybe it was Mama and Papa Finch finishing the nest.  By June 8th, Mama seemed to have settled into the nest and begun to incubate the eggs.  

Location, Location, Location!

We sighed and resigned ourselves to using the back door and having our happy hour on the back patio instead of on the front porch in the afternoon for at least the next month while the birds incubated and hatched their eggs.  

Finally, after about two weeks, we saw Mama Finch poking around in the nest, and a couple of days later saw two little fuzzy heads poking up above the rim of the nest and both Mama and Papa feeding the two chicks.  

By July 1st we were seeing at least three heads and hearing cheeping, but it was several more days before any of them had real feathers.  We were never sure how many eggs and chicks there were in the nest, and they just seemed to keep coming.  Finally the chicks began to leave the nest one by one.  One of the adult birds would sit in the shrubbery across the driveway or on the porch railing chirping at them.  Then both adults would fly up to the beam, fly back down, back up, back down, back up, and eventually one of the chicks would fly off with both parents.  It took several days, but by Friday at dinnertime there was only one chick left, standing on the very edge of the nest looking a bit lonely.  By the time we got up in the morning, the last one had flown.  

So we were "empty nesters" again, but we were determined to not make the same mistake we made last time:  then we waited a couple of days before we took down the nest, wore masks and gloves but no other protective gear and didn't go in and take showers right away.  Bird mites live on birds, and when there are no birds around, they look for another host:  us.  Cindy got the worst of it, with about forty mite bites, and the remaining mites continued to bite us for about three weeks before they all died off.  This time we were ready for them.  We ordered some Tyvek suits with hoods and wore them with gloves and masks.  We looked like space aliens, or something out of Ghostbusters.

Who Was That Masked Woman?

Cindy climbed up the ladder and sprayed the nest with a miticide solution several times before we took the nest down.  Then we sprayed the porch and porch furniture to make sure we got them all.  Then we went in, threw our clothes in the washer and took showers.  

Space Aliens in the Neighborhood????

Our neighbor across the street took this picture of the two of us as we were cleaning up.    

We've always tried to live by Mr. Bennett's dictum in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, "For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?"

Finches Leave The Nest

We think the second of the four House Finch fledglings left the nest this morning; the first one seems to have left yesterday afternoon.  There were only two heads visible in the nest this morning when Mama bird was feeding them, and they both look like they still have some growing to do.

Old House Finch Nest

This photo is from a nest from two years ago.  The House Finches love this location on the beam that runs above our front porch because it's close to the birdseed feeder and the fountain in the back yard, and it's well protected from predators.

We had some Mourning Doves nesting there years ago.  They were not very good parents; they would just throw a few twigs on the beam and call it a nest, and one day one of the parents turned around and its tail feathers swept the chick right off the beam.  So we decided to discourage them from coming back by installing some plastic spikes along the top of the beam.  That seemed to work--they kept coming back for a while, but apparently couldn't figure out the spikes.  My stern lecture to one of the doves sitting on the porch railing about the need for them to be better parents if they chose to nest there again may also have influenced their decision to go elsewhere ("The neighbors are crazy people, Gladys, they talk to birds, we'd better go somewhere else.")

The House Finches are a different story, though.  Far from discouraging them from nesting there, the plastic spikes provided them with a means to secure their nest by weaving their twigs, pine needles and Asparagus Fern in and around the spikes for better protection and stability.

They are very good parents, with both parents maintaining a regular feeding schedule for all their chicks.  They stick fairly close to the chicks for a while after they leave the nest, apparently teaching them how to navigate the big world.  Several years ago we saw a mother House Finch trying to show her chick how to get seed from the feeder.  Junior wanted Mama to keep feeding him, but she apparently felt it was time for him to move on.  http://plantagarden-itllgrowonyou.blogspot.com/2014/07/mama-bird-and-junior.html.  

The Nest Itself

We took the House Finch nest down from the beam over our front porch Friday morning.  The last two fledgling birds flew off on Monday morning, so there was no reason for the nest itself to stay up there; if these same parents or other finches decide to have a nest there, they will construct a new one.

Good thing, too--the growing baby birds don't wear diapers, so the inside of the nest is pretty well coated with bird poop by the time they fly off.

I was curious about the construction of the nest, so I told Cindy I wanted a picture of it before it went into the trash.

House Finch Nest

This shot is of the underside of the nest.  It looks like the birds used twigs and Asparagus Fern to tie the nest together and probably to anchor it to the plastic bird spikes on the beam, and used dead leaves as cushioning for the eggs and nestlings.

We were never quite sure exactly how many eggs and birds were in the nest; we didn't want to disturb the birds any more than was necessary and even when Cindy climbed up to replace the nestling that had fallen out she did it so quickly that she didn't stop to count the number of chicks in the nest.  In any case, the nest was big enough to accommodate them and kept them safe until they could fly.